Formation of the Red River Colony (1 ene 1811 año – 2 ene 1811 año)

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The Red River Colony (also called the Selkirk Colony or Assiniboia) was a colony created by the Hudson’s Bay Company leader at the time, Thomas Douglas, Fifth Earl of Selkirk, in the Red River Valley, in 1811. It was created to give Scottish Highlanders, retired HBC workers and Swiss mercenaries a place to live. (Belshaw, p. 292) It was an absolutely gigantic colony, with both NWC and HBC trading posts, a mixture of different countrymen, fur traders, Métis people, and whoever else ventured into the Western frontier of Canada (Belshaw . 292-293) At first, it held a lot of trade power with the local Indigenous population, allowing them to trade pemmican for a lot of their needs, but the export of that pemmican was banned in 1814, as the colony began facing a widespread famine. (Watson, The Fur Trade, slide 34; Belshaw, p. 293) This ban on pemmican seriously affected the Métis who were using it as the brunt of their trade, and this came to head in 1816, when the Battle of Seven Oaks occured. It was a skirmish between a part of Métis traders and a party from the Red River Settlement. In the quick shootout, 19 people from the Red River Settlement were killed, while only 1 Métis was killed. (Belshaw, p. 293, Watson, The Fur Trade, slide 35) I believe that the formation of the Red River Colony was very important to the history of Canada, because it was one of the first very large settlements in the Western frontier of Canada, and paved a path for settlers to head to the Western coast. It also generated the brunt of the fur trade, and began an early economic boom for both the new settlers of the West, and the First Nations peoples. I also believe that it was one of the catapulting reasons that HBC and NWC merged with each other, rather than continuing their long standing rivalry and competition over the fur trade.

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